Paul talking about how at University Lincoln they have created lists of new items using RefWorks. Using paper slips that came back from library acquisitions department to create lists of new books on RefWorks RSS feeds – shared folder with an RSS output.

Then used Yahoo Pipes to take the RSS feed from RefWorks – use Regex expressions to identify and ISBN within the RefWorks ISBN, then build HTML from lookups on OPAC,Amazon,Library Thing – http://pipes.yahoo.com/lincoln/books. Then put it through Google Feedburner to get a short URL, and set up email subscriptions (better for academic staff – easier for them to use than RSS, get an email from the library everytime).

Chris talking about discovery layer – sits on top, next generation catalogue is OPAC ‘done right’. Requirements : more human metadata, tagging – potential for users,comments/reviews,links to other services. Permanent links – need to be readablelinks. Can have one search but also needs to be flexible – eg to have catalogue subsets. Examples are: Primo, Prism, Blacklight, Scriblio (blogging tool as a catalogue base), Bibliocommons,VuFind.

Aquabrowser – now implemented at Sussex : http://beta.lib.sussex.ac.uk/ABL/ – some issues eg get taken through to interface of old catalogue, users may need to login twice for My Account. Also two worlds of LMS Catalogue and E-resources Articles can often collide though.

Edith described problems with existing reading lists- often out of date – needed updating. Using Yahoo Pipes to examine current reading lists items and extract for searches on RILM database, using RSS feeds. – giving the user a list of suggested searches. Gets feed from RSS and pull out bits of data from the feed – eg just the subject terms from the RSS feed, filter the feed for one entry per subject.

Other possibilities of using reading list – use the ISBN to look up an Amazon style ‘ people who borrowed this book also borrowed that’, and Dave Pattern’s Mosaic API .

Mark talking about the problems of designing systems – using paper is a suitable media for solving user-centric problems. Meaningful contact with users earlier in the process before you start to code, helps to bridge world between developers and users.

Brainstorming: can generate and broaden design ideas; helps with task analysis to break the task down into its components,sub-tasks and also to identify problems. Can use paper flowcharts to test and re-evaluate ideas with users. Can extract objects from taskflow that have attributes and data attached to them.

Build paper prototype to show what the objects are like on the screen.eg dialogue boxes,and identify particular tasks.Example of using students to test prototype of interface- along with a faclilitator – in a workshop scenario. By the endof the workshop, stick the ideas to the wall.

Machine prototypes also useful though : can pick up on problems due to number of clicks. Use Photoshop,Illustrator,as welll as open source tools like Inkscape and Gimp to manipulate images.

Tamar talking about a ‘take- it-and-build-it yourself ‘ attitude from Ex-Libris- using open source http://www.exlibrisgroup.org/display/ElCommons/Home . Ex-Libris launched open platform strategy about a year and half ago -to facilitate collaboration using software built from independent software components using ‘open interfaces’ eg API,(SOAP,X-Services, RESTful Web Services), Plug-ins, Adapters, Deep-links. A recent example is in version 3 of Primo – using OPAC functionality.

Of all the silly nonsense, this is the stupidest tea party I've ever been to in all my life

I see mash ups as the opportunity to combine different data sets to create a new service. There is potential to exploit the valuable data available and a couple of sites I have looked at for inspiration is the 30 ideas for mash ups – from Mash Opp North and Library Mashups.

Why not browse the site while listening to the “Middlemash theme tune”created by Mark Brown (@mcbjazz), he put this mashup together using several open source audio tools Myna,(online music editor) Audacity, and MuseScore – as well a free text to voice software espeak in which he chopped up two quotes from Middlemarch : one taken from the opening lines of the novel: “Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.”; and another famous quotation : “we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence”. Some of the “tweets” were all taken from recordings made originally on minidisc, and mixed up via Myna on top of the backing, with the live soprano sax recorded last.